Friday, March 16, 2007

Items in the Office Vending Machine and the People Who Buy Them OR Phoning It In

DO-Hershey’s Special Dark. My grandfather, your grandfather, Belgians with low standards.D1-M&M’s (regular). Mothers looking to occupy their children. When I look back on the amount of time I spent categorizing, defining, and dividing M&Ms into different color groups, I question whether my parents even existed, or whether I just imagined them.D2-Butterfinger. Aging frat boys, members of corporate softball teams.D3-Three Musketeers. D’Artagnan, me. I’m a big fan of these, and usually I bite off the chocolate coating in sheaths, then eat the sticky inner part all by its lonesome. I always assumed that this was the norm, like just eating only the middles of Oreos or cheating on your taxes, but when I was first witnessed performing this ritual, my friend looked at me like I was methodically deboning a live bat.D4-Peanut Chews. 1940s schoolgirls. As a general rule, I don’t think any food product name should include the bodily function required to digest it.D5-Peanut Butter stuffed cheese crackers. Costco-shopping mothers needing to send their kids to snacktime with something other than leftovers. Am I wrong, or didn’t these used to be two separate snacks? Peanut butter crackers, and then cheese crackers. I don’t know if I applaud the manufacturer for efficiency, or blame them for all that’s wrong with America. I think the former.D6- Zagnut. Beetlejuice, me. This is my favorite candy bar, and the one most likely to flake off into your hair, neither of which is much of a selling point.D7- Hot tamales. Latina firecrackers who tell themselves things like “You’re fabulous”, people wronged by men named either “Mike” or “Ike”.D8, D9- Peanut M&Ms. Mothers looking to occupy and choke their children. These weren’t as fun to categorize and define, probably because they rolled off the table so easily, and because when one of these mutated in the candy-coating process, it made them look downright carcinogenic.EO- Nature Valley Peanut Butter granola bar. HR Women who applaud themselves for “snacking healthy”.E1-Snickers. Everybody. These are my favorite ingredient with which to make my beloved Dairy Queen Blizzards, as there’s always a very real possibility that they will break the machine, adding an element of danger to my gluttony.E2- Nutrigrain bar (apple). No one. No one buys these. That same bar has been sitting in slot E2 longer than your mother*. I once saw a guy accidentally hit the wrong button, get one of these, and just leave it there. The unwanted orphan baby of the vending machine.E3- Almond Joy. Mounds lovers who feel like throwing caution to the wind. Though delicious, no one has ever eaten an Almond Joy and felt in any way sated.E4- Nature Valley Oats-n-Honey granola bar. Horses, HR Women who applaud themselves for “snacking healthy” and look disdainfully upon colleagues buying the peanut butter version.E5-Nutrigrain bar (strawberry). Still no one. I’m not saying that vending machine restock guys need a background in statistical analysis, but surely someone up the line has noticed that this product has failed to move a single unit in the history of its existence.E6- Starbust. Midlevel execs who are trying to quit smoking, surfers. When are they going to just make an all-pink Starburst pack, already? Those green ones are the grenades of the sleeve.E7- Lorna Doone shortbread cookies. Though typing the phrase “My opinions on shortbread are already well-documented” has singlehandedly caused me re-evaluate my life and the choices that have brought me to the point at which I’m able to make such a statement, I just want to reiterate- who the hell picks shortbread as a snack?E8- Snackwells cookies. Fat chicks. Disturbingly familiar with Snackwells brand products thanks to a childhood spent under the dietary tutelage of an overweight parent, I can tell you how the process works: Lower fat=ability to eat more of the product with less of the guilt. The full box should read “Serving Size- You’re holding it in your grubby, sausagey hands”.E9-Kit Kat Crispy. Average people of average weight with average intellect who tell you stories about their kids. Aren’t all Kit Kats crispy? Isn’t that the selling point? It’s kind of hard to make a wafer-based product not crispy, though I’d buy it in the name of science.FO-Joey’s Pound Cake. Girls in accounting who have just been dumped by their boyfriends. This is the start of Obesity Row. Fitting.F2-Newtons Minis. Props to Nabisco for managing to turn a dime from figs, especially after that whole Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark-dead monkey PR nightmare, but this is just greedy. I’ve never seen anyone turn down a Newton on the grounds that it was “just too gigantic.”F4-Entenmann’s Carrot Cake. My grandmother, Grandmothers of the World, Rabbit Grandmothers.F6-Devil Dogs. No data available. Though they sell surprisingly well considering they’re named for two things I don’t want to put in my mouth.F8-Joey’s Marble Cake. Girls in accounting who were dumped by their boyfriends a day or two after their colleaguesHO-H4- Lifesavers and Carefree gum. I’m pretty sure these are just cardboard cutouts standard with every vending machine.

I've entertained similar hopes for one day, even if just through some sort of production mistake, coming across an all pink pack of Star Bursts.You know how in the original pack you get 3 pink, 3 red, 3 orange, and 3 yellow (these taste poisonous)? Well, when I was younger, I got a pack with just 2 yellows and 4 pinks. Twice. In a row.God smiled on me then...

I suddenly feel very dirty about enjoying and often purchasing Nature's Valley granola bars (both varieties). Since I am not a horse, I this means I am destined to work in HR. This career path is NOT okay with me...